I remember this entire series being good. I read it as I was probably leaving high school or just out of, but I haven't been able to find the entire series used or even at the store, and certainly not at the library any more. But it was a great series.
What's very funny is that I was reading the back cover to make a journal entry since I can't remember this book, and the one review snippet quotes the newspaper I used to work for. "A masterwork... a bold sweep of the imagination -- lush in the description of future Asian rule and the intricacies of power, deception and lust." South Bend Tribune. I know whoever wrote that review must be long gone, undoubtedly, but it's still funny. I don't think the Tribune even reviews many books these days, unless maybe there's a special circumstance of a local author.
Anyway, from the back:
A dying old man's dreams warn the Seven T'ang that a fierce storm is approaching.. so dark, so deadly it can destory a world. Not even the T'ang, rulers of the magnificent mile high city-kingdoms of the planet, can predict from where the danger will come. Does it lie in the masses beginning to rebel, clutching at memories of freedom, sky and sunlight? Or from a reckless scientific search to find the key to immortality? DOes it lurk inside the mind of a painter with a revolutionary high tech art... or inside the ranks of the Seven themselves? For as assasins spread outward to a fortified palace in space, treachery moves inward into men's and women's hearts to bring down a dynasty.